Dan Morgenstern - JazzTimes Community Articleshttp://www.jazztimes.com/
The world's leading jazz publication.en-usMilt Hinton: The Judge - FeaturesThe undisputed dean of bassists and long one of the most beloved and respected members of the jazz community, Milt Hinton is jazz history personified. As he approaches 90 (he was born on June 23, 1910), the man known to myriad friends and fans as “Judge” (he once joked that he earned his nickname because he “sentences everyone to 30 days of listening to good music”) stopped playing his demanding instrument a while ago, but he is still a vibrant presence on the jazz scene. You might encounter him as an honored guest at a concert, a festival, a jazz party or a cruise, where he may consent to take a solo chorus, or sing what became his theme song late in life, “Old Man Time.” Or you’ll find him as an invaluable participant in a seminar or panel discussion. Just this past December, he shared his keen insights with those present at a Local 802 Jazz Advisory Council meeting billed as “A Conversation Between Generations” on the theme of “Building a Jazz Career in New York.” No one, it’s safe to say, knows more about that subject than Milt Hinton, whose truly astonishing career spans most of the 20th century. His encounter with jazz began in Chicago, where his family had moved in 1919 from his native Vicksburg, Miss. He started on violin at 13, but by then he’d already heard and seen most of the great bands and musicians active in his Southside neighborhood. He was good at the fiddle, but as a sophomore...Dan MorgensternTue, 30 Sep 2008 19:16:42 -0400http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20493-milt-hinton-the-judge
http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20493-milt-hinton-the-judgeCharlie Christian: Swing to Bop and Beyond - FeaturesCharlie Christian has been gone for nearly 60 years, but there isn’t a guitarist worthy of the name that’s unaware of who this jazz genius was and how significant his contribution continues to be. Yet of all the indelible names in the pantheon of jazz, his is the one granted the least time to earn its place. For a scant 22 months, Charlie Christian occupied center stage of the jazz world, and then he was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared. We know the basic facts of his life: Born in Dallas, Texas, on July 29, 1916, youngest son of a blind musician; raised in Oklahoma City, where he and his two brothers all became professional players; playing bass and guitar with various bands, including that of Alphonse Trent; beginning to experiment with amplification in 1937; heard by various touring musicians who were impressed, among them Teddy Wilson, Eddie Durham (a pioneer of amplified guitar who gave Charlie pointers) and Mary Lou Williams, who told John Hammond, who went to Oklahoma City to hear for himself and promptly gave Charlie train fare to Los Angeles, where he auditioned for Benny Goodman and was hired on the spot; featured member of Goodman’s sextet, then septet, recording prolifically, jamming at Minton’s, winning polls and then, as his tuberculosis worsened, forced to leave the band, spending the remainder of his brief life in a hospital, where he died on March 2, 1942 And we know the records, and hear echoes of his inventions, riffs and melodies all over...Dan MorgensternFri, 19 Sep 2008 14:24:46 -0400http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20361-charlie-christian-swing-to-bop-and-beyond
http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20361-charlie-christian-swing-to-bop-and-beyondIra Sabin: Cool Daddy-O! - Features“I’ve been very fortunate,” says JazzTimes founder, former record-store owner and ex-jazz drummer Ira Sabin. “I’ve always done what I wanted to all my life. Running a store may have seemed a drag, but I made it a happening thing. The magazine is doing great; it started as a handout in the store, and now we’ve got a large staff—a bunch of good people. I’ve had a ball!” Ira still talks like the bebop drummer he once was, and in the near quarter-century that I’ve known him I’ve yet to see a frown on his face. He is that true rara avis: a happy man. It all started when he was 12, not long after the Brooklyn-born boy had moved with his family to Washington, D.C. “The Veterans of Foreign Wars hosted an assembly at school, asking for volunteers for a drum-and-bugle corps. I raised my hand and they gave me a drum,” Ira recalls. Not long thereafter he discovered jazz, and at 14 a neighbor, who was a music teacher, took him along on a trip to New York. “He had something to do and parked me in a club on 52nd Street—it was the Onyx, and who should be on the stand but Dizzy and Bird!” By this time, Ira was in a high school band that also included the great trombonist-to-be Rob Swope, but the first encounter with Gillespie was prophetic: the trumpeter became Sabin’s jazz hero, and a very special friend—as well as the first subscriber to Radio Free Jazz the ancestral...Dan MorgensternThu, 11 Sep 2008 20:22:35 -0400http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20302-ira-sabin-cool-daddy-o
http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/features/articles/20302-ira-sabin-cool-daddy-oThe Reprise Studio Recordings, Duke Ellington - AlbumsThe critics have largely neglected Ellington's Reprise period (late 1963 to early 1965), and in view of the abundance of Ellingtonia spawned by the Ducal centennial, some might not consider this set essential. That would be a mistake: the music in this flawlessly assembled compilation is uncommonly multi-faceted, even for Ellington, and wondrous to hear and behold. When, at the behest of co-owner Frank Sinatra, Ellington was signed by Reprise, he was given a free hand to record what he pleased, both as his own producer, and as jazz A&R man for the label. True to character, the jazz press began to question that Ellington truly had carte blanche when he failed to do what they thought he ought to have done. Thus, while the initial Reprise LP, Afro Bossa, which consisted in the main of new Ellington and Strayhorn pieces, was well received, as was The Symphonic Ellington, which contained the first recording of "Harlem" as scored for the band plus symphony orchestra and the premiere of "Night Creature," the subsequent Ellington '65 and Ellington '66, compendiums of current hit tunes, and Mary Poppins, the Ellington-Strayhorn interpretation of the movie score, were considered lesser efforts. And so, predictably, was Will the Big Bands Ever Come Back?, Ellington's reconsiderations of the theme songs of a wide range of bands, sweet and hot. (Enough of these were recorded for two LPs, but the second didn't get issued until 1976, after Duke's death, as did the fascinating Jazz Violin Session; both appeared on Atlantic but are included here.)...Dan MorgensternThu, 07 Jun 2007 14:05:44 -0400http://www.jazztimes.com/sections/albums/articles/11220-the-reprise-studio-recordings-duke-ellington
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